Method for Separation of Packet NetworkManagement Domains

ABSTRACT

The present invention provides a mechanism and a method for indirectly controlling a packet handling device interface from an optical management system in an packet-optical network. A mechanism is provided for controlling a packet handling device, such as a router, interface from a management system indirectly, by using optical equipment as a proxy and communicating between the optical gear and router via a peer-to-peer signaling protocol. The present invention provides a management method that allows separate management systems for the optical layer and the packet network layer and a method for managing the network across the domains.

RELATED PATENT APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/421,661, filed Jun. 1, 2006, which isincorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of Invention

The present invention relates to management of optical and packetnetwork devices and, more particularly, to a method for maintaining bothan optical and an packet management domain in a network architecturewhere optical management functions reside on packet network device.

2. Description of the Background Art

Traffic on packet networks, of which the Internet is the best-knownexample, continues to grow at astonishing rates so carriers havedeployed high capacity optical networks that can handle the increasedtraffic volume. As such, optical networks are now widely utilized.Typically, the optical network is dedicated to long haul traffic andmust interface at some point to packet, such as Internet Protocol (IP),networks, comprised of routers, switches and other infrastructuredevices.

Most optical networking systems are now based on WDM (WavelengthDivision Multiplexing) or DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing)technology both of which will be referred to herein as a WDM networkunless specifically otherwise noted. In the past, a transponder has beenused as the interface between the optical domain and the IP domain. Assuch, the transponder was the logical network device to be used formanaging operations of the optical network. Indeed, the transponder hastraditionally implemented many of the fault, configuration, accounting,performance and security (FCAPS) management functions that are necessaryto manage the optical network.

With the transponder functioning as the demarcation point between theoptical and packet networks, it was possible for a system administratoron the optical side to determine certain operational characteristics ofthe optical network. For example, at the transponder, bit error ratestatistics are collected before traffic leaves the optical domain andenters the packet network domain. Because bit error rates cannot bedetected in the optical domain, such statistics were collected when thetransponder converted traffic from the optical domain to the packetnetwork domain as well as in the reverse direction.

Since the optical network technology is considerably different from thatemployed in the packet network, it was logical to manage the opticaldomain separately from the packet network domain. Indeed, each domainhas developed its own set of management tools and protocols and serviceproviders (SPs) maintain separate administration staffs dedicated tomanaging each network.

While the separation of the optical domain from the packet networkdomain has resulted in efficient management of the two networks, costreductions have led to the elimination of the transponder from theoptical side of the network with the router now handling the trafficconversion from one domain to another. This architectural change isreferred to herein as the packet -optical architecture or anpacket-optical architecture network. Unfortunately, this architecturalchange in network topology has left management of the optical domainwith an information void because many of the statistics previouslygathered at the transponder are no longer available. Unfortunately, itis difficult to maintain the traditional separation of the management ofthe packet network layer from the optical layer since, with thisarchitecture, it is necessary to manage certain optical aspects from therouter interface by the optical layer management system.

Although it is possible to provide access to the router to manage eachwavelength and to obtain the statistics necessary to manage the opticaldomain, it is difficult to cross management domains because of theexisting mandate for two separate management systems. Furthermore,difficulties arise when the packet and optical networks are owned andcontrolled by different service providers where access to the necessarymanagement information may be readily provided to the optical networkadministrators. Even within a single service provider, however, theadministrators of the packet network domain may be reluctant to provideoptical network administrators direct access to the router for securityand other operational considerations. Without access to criticaloperational data, many service providers are reluctant to take advantageof the cost savings afforded by the new architectures that eliminate thetransponder or that otherwise move the interface between domains suchthat it is inside the packet network domain.

Unfortunately, existing network management systems have not consideredthe issues that arise from integrated packet-optical networks insofar asrespecting the operational boundaries between the optical and packetnetwork management domains are concerned. What is needed is a system andmethod that allows carriers to adopt packet-optical networks withoutchanging the organizational structure or the manner in which theorganization operates.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of a packet-optical architecture for anetwork in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates the optical management interfaces for apacket-optical network environment in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating a method for managing anIP-optical network to acquire performance data for the optical networkin accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating a method for managing anIP-optical network to configure the router interface from the opticaldomain in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating another method for managing anIP-optical network to configure the router interface from the opticaldomain in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 illustrates a portion of an IP-optical architecture for a networkin accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram that illustrates configuration management byauto-negotiations in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 8 illustrates one method for automatically detecting the mappingbetween the router interfaces and the optical layer interface inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to management of a packet network-opticalnetwork and, more particularly, to a method for maintaining both anoptical and a packet network management domain in a network architecturewhere at least one optical management function resides on a packetnetwork network device.

In the following description of embodiments of the present invention,reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof,and in which is shown by way of illustration specific embodiments inwhich the invention may be practiced. It is to be understood that otherembodiments may be utilized and that changes may be made withoutdeparting from the scope of the present invention.

Further, in the following description of embodiments of the presentinvention, numerous specific details are provided to provide a completeunderstanding of the embodiments of the invention. One skilled in therelevant art will recognize, however, that the invention may bepracticed without one or more of the specific details, or with othermethods, components, etc. In other instances, well-known structures oroperations are not shown or described in detail to avoid obscuringaspects of various embodiments of the invention. Wherever possible, thesame reference numbers are used throughout in the drawings to refer tothe same or like components.

Referring now to the drawings, particularly by their reference numbers,FIG. 1 illustrates a network environment 100 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Environment 100 includes a packetnetwork 102 and an optical network 104. Examples of network 102 include,but are not limited to, a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network(WAN), a client-server network, a peer-to-peer network, the Internet andso forth. Examples of optical network 104 include, but are not limitedto, a WDM network, a DWDM network and so forth.

The packet network 102 in FIG. 1 is described as an Internet Protocol(IP) network as an example and includes various network devices, ofwhich representative core router 106 is illustrated. It will beappreciated that the example IP network 102 includes additional networkdevices, such as switches or other network infrastructure devices, whichare not shown. A network management center (NOC) 108 resides on the IPnetwork control plane, which is illustrated by network cloud 109, tomanage IP network 102. NOC 108 executes software that manages theoperational aspects of the router other than the per-packet analysis anddelivery and responds to any system status/health anomalies.

Router 106 interfaces with optical network 104 and is responsible forconverting traffic between the IP and optical domains. By way ofexample, router 106 may be a carrier class router, such as thecommercially available Cisco CRS-1 core router. Of course, other packethandling devices, such as Ethernet switches or Provider Bridge Transport(PBT) devices, may be in place of a router.

NOC 108 comprises a system of equipment used in monitoring, controlling,and managing the IP network 102 including the network infrastructuredevices such as router 106. NOC 108 may use various softwareapplications but are typically managed using the command line interface,often referred to as CLI, and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) basedapplications.

WDM optical network 104 is illustrated as including an optical networkelement (ONE), such as optical wavelength cross-connect 114. Wavelengthcross-connect 114 is illustrated having four optical fiber inputs 116a-116 d that carry traffic in the form of modulated optical signals. Itwill be appreciated that wavelength cross-connect 114 may have four,eight, sixteen or some other number of optical fiber inputs. Preferably,wavelength cross-connect 114 includes the lasers and photonic detectorsin WDM interface 122 that can accept and generate optical signals.

Optical network further comprises optical interface components such asphotonic switches, multiplexers, demultiplexers and circuitry formapping data streams into the optical layer as well as for demappingdata streams. Optical network 104 includes a plurality of ONEs that arenot illustrated herein. Optical network 104 further includes an opticalnetwork operations center (NOC) 118 that resides on an optical networkcontrol plane 120 to manage optical network 104. Optical network controlplane 120 is represented by a network cloud. Typically, NOC 118 usesTransaction Language One as the telecommunications management protocolwidely used to manage optical Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH),Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) and optical transport networks aswell as other means to provide rapid identification of services impactedby network outages.

It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the network shownin FIG. 1 (and the other figures) is only intended to depict a smallsection of a representative IP-optical network employing the presentinvention, and is not drawn to scale. The size, relationship and devicesused for the network devices shown in these figures may be alteredsignificantly from that shown without departing from the presentteachings.

Router 106, representative of packet handling devices, includes WDMinterfaces 122 that feed directly into the optical layer withoutmediation by transponders and is a key component for merging the IPdomain with the optical domain. One skilled in the art will understandthat such interfaces are presently available in state of the artIP-optical networks. Thus, in this IP-optical network, optical signalsthat cross the IP-optical boundary 110 are directed to WDM interfaces122 where the optical signals are converted to IP traffic. Similarly, IPtraffic destined for the optical network is converted to optical trafficby WDM interface 122. WDM interfaces 122 may include a tunable laser andis directly integrated with router 106. Effectively, WDM interface 122collapses network environment 100 by removing a layer of SONETequipment, such as the transponder from the optical domain and shortrange optical interface cards from the IP domain, to save costs and tolink IP traffic directly with SONET operations.

NOC 118 monitors operational conditions of the optical layer andincludes a plurality of sensors and systems that enable administratorsof optical network 104 to monitor and correct problems when errors aredetected. As is well known in the art, typically when an error occurs inthe optical network, an alarm is generated that is transferred to theoptical control plane 120 and delivered to NOC 118. While the IP-opticalarchitecture provides significant cost savings by removing transpondersfrom network 100, it blurs the demarcation between the IP domain and theoptical domain. Many of the fault, configuration, accounting,performance and security (FCAPS) management functions that traditionallyreside on a transponder are now moved to the WDM interface on therouter, that is, across the boundary into the IP domain.

To illustrate the problem for administrators of the optical network,consider that bit error rate statistics can no longer be collected inthe optical layer without a component that performs the necessaryelectrical processing on the traffic. Rather, in the IP-optical network,only the WDM interface 122 on the router can collect such statistics forthe optical traffic.

Because of the optical aspects of the router interface, only NOC 108would be aware of a soft error type of problem, indicated at 124,occurring in the optical domain. Soft errors are errors other than lossof light or other forward defect indicators (FDI) in the optical domain.Since the router 106 may still be receiving bits, any alarms generatedby the router as a result of the problem 124 could be assigned a lowpriority. Without the present invention, NOC 118 would not havevisibiltiy of the error and would be unable to proactively resolve theproblem. In an idealized network environment, the IP networkadministrators would simply provide NOC 118 full access to themanagement functions of the router 106 but this openness makes itdifficult to keep the management of the router separate from themanagement of the optical layer. The problem is further exacerbated byorganizational boundaries within most service providers that require, atleast as a first management step, that the two management domains remainseparate and each retain the same black box behavior as in traditionalarchitecture. With the present invention, the error condition isreported to both management center 108, as indicated at 126, and NOC118, as indicated at 128. This allows the optical layer to report thealarm to NOC 118. Furthermore, when router 106 detects a problem in theIP domain, it sends a backward defect indicator to the adjacent node,that is, the wavelength cross-connect 114 as indicated at 130.

Refer now to FIG. 2, which is a generalized illustration of the opticalmanagement interfaces for an IP-optical network environment. Rather thanmanage the router interface directly from the optical layer managementsystem, one embodiment of the present invention provides a system and amethod for accessing the router from the optical domain to detect errorconditions, including soft errors such as bit error rate, for eachwavelength. Accordingly, embodiments of the present invention provide anIP-optical architecture that separates the management system of theoptical layer from that of the router layer that avoids the problems ofthe integration of two different management languages, techniques andadministrators.

The invention is based, in part, on a protocol layer 202 between therouter 106 and a ONE 204 that allows NOC 118 to collect the transmissionrelated data from the router interface, as well as set desiredparameters on the router interface. ONE 204 may be any optical networkedge device, such as a multiplexer or a photonic switch.

In one embodiment, the protocol layer 202 is an extension of theexisting Link Management Protocol or LMP, which preferably is based onthe LMP-WDM IETF standard. LMP is currently used to coordinate errordetection and is primarily used to indicate across a domain boundarythat a problem has been detected in one domain to the management centerin the other domain. To illustrate, with the existing LMP, if the routerdetects a problem with its operation, an LMP message would be sent tothe NOC 118 merely to provide notification of the current status of theIP network. Or, if the NOC 118 detected a problem in the optical domain,then an LMP message would be sent to the management center 108 toprovide notification of the current status of the optical network. Inneither case, would the prior art LMP message enable a networkadministrator on the optical side to reconfigure the router in responseto a detected problem. Advantageously, the present invention providesthe mechanism and the method for responding to a problem in the opticaldomain by changing or correcting router configuration. The protocollayer 202 may also be based on network management protocols, such as XML(eXtensible Markup Language), SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol),CLI (Command Line Interface) or TL/1 (Transaction Language 1).

Alternatively, the protocol, in accordance with the present invention,may be implemented as a separate protocol, such as a peer-to-peersignaling protocol. Peer-to-peer signaling protocol is suitable wherethe IP network and the optical network are operated by a single entityand subject to a unified management scheme.

In addition to the defined protocol layer 202, the present inventionalso provides a logical interface 206 as part of the management model ofthe ONE. The logical interface, which represents the opticalcharacteristics of the router interface, acts as a proxy for thephysical router interface, but in the optical domain. Therefore, alloptical alarms and performance data that are retrieved by the NOC 118,as well as provisioning of the router interface from the NOC, areperformed on logical interface 206.

When NOC 118 sends a command, which is typically a TL1 based command, tothe ONE 204 relating to logical interface 206, ONE 204 translates thecommand to the protocol between ONE 204 and router 106 and indirectlyprovisions or retrieves management data from the router. Alternatively,ONE 204 may retrieve the data from the router 106 at an earlier time andstore the data in a local database for retrieval by NOC 118. Suchretrieval may, for example, be initiated by a periodic polling request.

When router 106 detects a problem in the IP domain, then router 106sends a backward defect indicator to the adjacent ONE. This allows theoptical layer to report the alarm to NOC 118. The combination of theprotocol layer and the logical interface function as a virtualtransponder. This combination provides NOC 118 with alarm correlationwith router 106, tuning wavelengths, pushing or pulling statistical dataand general performance monitoring. Because the NOC 118 still retainscontrol of wavelength management as well as soft errors, networkoperations in the IP-optical network environment is enhanced.

FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment of the present invention for managingan IP-optical network to acquire performance data that may not beacquired in the IP domain but which is required by telecom standards inthe optical domain. Specifically, telecom standards call for storage andretrieval of 15 minutes counters and 24 hour counters that are notrequired in the IP domain. Thus, on a periodic basis, ONE 204 initiatesa request to receive counter values for a 15 minute counter as indicatedat 302. Since retention of counter values is not typically supported bymost routers, the information is stored in a database associated withONE 204 for use by NOC 118 as indicated at 304. Such requests are madeevery 15 minutes as indicated at 306. Similarly, the counter value for a24 hour counter is also periodically made as indicated at 308-312.

FIG. 4 illustrates an embodiment of the present invention for managingan IP-optical network to configure the router interface. In order toconfigure router 106, several parameters must be configured on WDMinterface 122. Examples include the wavelength and the frame format(SONET, 10GE, or G.709), as well as thresholds for alarms that arerequired to properly manage the optical domain. In this embodiment, theONE translates a provisioning request from the NOC 118 into a routerrequest as indicated at 402. This request is a LMP-like request that isbased on an extension to the existing LMP protocol in one embodiment. Inanother embodiment, a proprietary protocol is defined to implement thetransfer of information between the router and the ONE. In anotherembodiment, an existing management interface (based on XML, SNMP, CLI orTL/1) is extended to implement the transfer of information. The routerrequest is then transferred to the router as indicated at 404. Therouter response is received as indicated at 406 and ONE relays therouter's response back to NOC 118 as indicated at 408.

FIG. 5 illustrates an embodiment of the present invention for managingan IP-optical network to configure the router interface. In thisembodiment, a parameter negotiation mechanism is used to provisionvalues on the router. This approach avoids attempting to force a valueon the router at the WDM interface, which may not be desirable if therouter management system also wants to determine various values orotherwise apply certain restrictions. To illustrate, at 502, NOC 118determines if the router administrator will allow any wavelength to beprovisioned by sending a request to router 106 through ONE 204. If theWDM interface 122 is provisioned such that it defines the allowablewavelength range as the entire spectrum, this message would be passed toNOC 118 through the ONE as indicated at 504-508. The response, in thisexample, enables NOC 118 to set the wavelength in accordance with theneeds of the optical domain as indicated at 510. Alternatively, if therouter administrator wishes to fix the wavelength, they would only allowone value. Alternatively, the router could allow for a subset ofallowable values to be returned to NOC 118. In either of thesealternative events, NOC 118 would accept the allowable values subject tothe ability to re-provision the optical domain. If NOC 118 is unable tore-provision, alarms are generated and the problem is escalated to anadministrator.

FIG. 6 illustrates another embodiment of the present invention thatincludes an out-of-band signaling interface 132 between router 106 andwavelength cross-connect 114. LMP is an out-of-band service since theoptical domain has no visibility into in-band data. Ideally, a dedicatedEthernet connection 132 between the main controllers of the router andthe ONE. However, since there may be several ONE systems and possiblyseveral routers all interconnected to each other at the same site,Ethernet connection 132 may include an Ethernet switch (notillustrated).

Ethernet connection 132 also guarantees the performance of the signalingchannel if, as in the preferred embodiment, the connection is separatefrom the management interface because the management interface may beoverloaded, during certain conditions such as a software download.Performance guarantees are crucial, especially where optical restorationis implemented, because the speed of restoration depends on the speed ofout-of-band signaling.

The mechanism and protocol of the present invention is not limited tofault reporting. Rather, in a preferred embodiment, it is also used forperformance monitoring of the optical domain. Thus, when the NOC needsto collect and display performance counters, such as the number of errorseconds in each 15 minute time frame, the importance of performancemonitoring comes from service providers that require the optical networkadministrators to continue to operate the transponder functions (FCAPS),but with the transponder functions transferred to the DWDM interface onthe router in the IP domain.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram that illustrates configuration management byauto-negotiations in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention. The ability of the two network edge devices (NEs), one on theIP side, such as routers 702 and 704, and one on the optical side of theboundary, such as ONE 706 and 708, to automatically agree on therelevant parameters without manual configuration of all NEs is not asimple task. The present invention therefore provides a method forprovisioning the optical interface by the optical group using negotiatedtechniques, as opposed to explicit provisioning of the physical layerinterface (PLI) by NOC 118.

In one embodiment, the negotiated parameters include:

-   -   signal type (10GE or OC192 PLI), which is a value determined by        the PLI card type;    -   signal format (native, G.709, G.709 with EFEC), which is a value        determined by either the PLI or from the optical domain;    -   the wavelength to be transmitted which is determined by NOC 118        which can add/drop ports, support fixed wavelengths, so that        when a PLI is connected to a particular port on ONE its        wavelength is well defined;    -   trace ID at the G.709 frame which can be set by an operation on        either side;    -   threshold crossing alarm (TCA) which is the threshold that is        set by an operation on either side of the boundary 110.

If NOC 118 sets the “virtual interface” that represents a router WDMport on ONE, and if the IP management system leaves these parametersundefined, then the values from the optical side will be accepted. Onthe other hand, if the IP management system 108 wishes to explicitly setsome values and exclude other values, then the values set in the IPdomain will not be overridden by what the NOC has provisioned. Thisauto-negotiation mechanism enables the parameters that the opticalsystem can provision on the router interface and then enables theoptical domain to automatically provision the interface.

Beyond the basic operations of the WDM interface on the router, it maybe desirable to automatically detect the mapping between that interfacesand the optical layer interface. Unlike the functions described above,this function is not mandatory because it is always possible to manuallyconfigure the mapping, however it is certainly a desirable feature as itprevents human error and is a labor saving function.

In order to discover how two interfaces are connected, it is necessaryto send an in-band code over these interfaces; however, optical domaindoes not have visibility into the signals it carries as each ONE 706 and708 are pure optical boxes with the conversion to bits occurring at therouter's ports. The optical domain does have a photodiode per interfacefor fault management purposes that allows it to detect a very slow codecreated by turning the laser on the router's WDM interface ports on andoff.

Two implementation details will determine the frequency of this on/offsequence:

-   -   the polling speed for the photodiode (when the polling is done        in software, the polling speed is on the order of about 100-200        ms); and    -   the speed at which the laser in the WDM interface can be turned        on and off.

Because the optical domain does not own the DWDM sources, it can notgenerate any type of autodiscovery sequence. Accordingly, theautodiscovery function is unidirectional with the optical domaindiscovering the incoming interfaces from the router and no activediscovery is done in the opposite direction for the interfaces from ONEs706 and 708 into the routers 702 and 704. The cabling is preferably thesame in both directions.

One skilled in the art will appreciate that determining when aparticular interface should start the autodiscovery sequence and whenshould it stop is a difficult issue to resolve and is preferably anengineering parameter to be decided for each particular application.However, the present invention provides that the re-start sequence thatoccurs after a disconnection between the two boxes and after the opticaldomain discovers the autodiscovery sequence from the router, it needs toreport back (over LMP) the recognized code from the interface over whichthe code was received. This establishes the mapping of the interfacesand needs to be reported back from the router to NOC 118 via the ONEagain over LMP 710.

FIG. 8 illustrates one method for automatically detecting the mappingbetween the router interfaces and the optical layer interface inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Advantageously,automatic mapping detection prevents human error and is not dependent onoperator intervention and that means that network operation can bequickly restored in the event of a temporary disconnect between thenetwork elements.

To discover how two interfaces, one in the IP domain and one in theoptical domain, are connected, the present invention initiates aprocedure for mapping the connection. Typically, the mapping occursafter a detected connection loss and the system is attempting tore-establish connection as indicated at 802. Because NOC 118 does nothave visibility into the optical signals carried on optical network 104,a photodiode at each interfaces (not illustrated) is also useful forboth auto mapping and fault management purposes.

At 804, router 106 initially begins to transmit a very slow in-band codeby turning the laser at WDM interface 122 on and off. At 806, the codeis detected by the photodiode by polling and passed to NOC 118. SinceNOC 118 does not own the WDM interface 122, it can not generate any typeof autodiscovery sequence, therefore the autodiscovery sequence isunidirectional with NOC 118 discovering the incoming interfaces fromrouter 106. Note that no active discovery occurs in the oppositedirection for the interfaces from NOC 118 into router 106.

As indicated at 808, when NOC 118 discovers the autodiscovery sequence,it reports to router 106 the code it detected at the interface,preferably with a message over LMP. In response to the message, router106 reports back to NOC 118 with a message that is again preferably overLMP as indicated at 810. As indicated 812, the message from the NOC 118to router 106 and the message from router 106 to NOC 118 initiatecertain action that each side needs to take to begin normal operations.At 814, data is transferred between the IP-optical domain.

Therefore, while the description above provides a full and completedisclosure of the preferred embodiments of the present invention,various modifications, alternate constructions, and equivalents will beobvious to those with skill in the art. Thus, the scope of the presentinvention is limited solely by the metes and bounds of the appendedclaims.

1. In a packet-optical network having packet network domain and anoptical domain including at least one optical networking element (ONE)coupled to and managed by a network operations center (NOC), the ONEcomprising: a logical interface, coupled to the NOC, the logicalinterface adapted to translate a request from the NOC to configure adevice in the IP domain, the device in the IP domain having a WavelengthDivision Multiplexing (WDM) optical interface for receiving andtransmitting optical wavelengths, the optical interface coupled to theONE; and a communication path for exchanging peer-to-peer signalingbetween the device in the IP domain and the NOC to provision the WDMoptical interface, wherein the communication path includes a protocolselected from the group comprising eXtensible Markup Language (XML) andSNMP.
 2. In packet-optical network having at least packet network domainwith at least one infrastructure device that is capable of convertingoptical signals to packet network signals and packet network signals tooptical signals, and an optical domain, a mechanism for reporting softerrors and performance monitoring in the optical domain comprising: anoptical network element having a first virtual interface, associatedwith the optical network element, to translate optical layer managementprotocol into requests transmitted to the infrastructure device and asecond virtual interface, associated with the optical network element,to translate responses to the requests from the infrastructure device tothe optical layer management protocol.
 3. The packet-optical network ofclaim 2 further comprising: a logical layer, associated with the firstand second virtual interface, the logical layer adapted to reconfigurethe infrastructure device in the packet network domain based on commandsreceived from the optical domain.
 4. The packet-optical network of claim2 wherein said one infrastructure device is capable of convertingoptical signals to IP signals and IP signals to optical signals.
 5. Amethod for managing the optical domain in a network having an packetnetwork domain and an optical domain, the method comprising: sending acommand to a logical interface associated with an optical networkdevice; translating the command into a provisioning message; negotiatinga configuration of an optical interface associated with a device in thepacket network domain from a management operations center in the opticaldomain; and accepting changes to the provisioning of the device in thepacket network domain.
 6. In a packet-optical network, a packet networkdevice comprising a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)interface coupled to an optical network device wherein the DWDMinterface is configured by requests received from a virtual transponderassociated with an optical network operations center.
 7. Theinfrastructure of claim 6, wherein the network packet device is anEthernet switch.
 8. The infrastructure of claim 6, wherein the packetnetwork device is a Provider Bridge Transport device.
 9. In apacket-optical network having a packet network domain and an opticaldomain, a system for managing a device in the packet network domain fromthe optical domain, the system comprising an optical networking element(ONE) a network operations center (NOC) coupled to the ONE; a networkedge device having a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)interface coupled to the ONE, wherein the network edge device comprisesa device selected from the group comprising a router, an Ethernet switchand a Provider Bridge Transport device; and a virtual transponderassociated with the ONE wherein the DWDM interface is configured byrequests generated by the NOC and translated into negotiated requests toindirectly control the DWDM interface.
 10. The system of claim 9 furthercomprising a communication band between the ONE and the packet networkdevice wherein requests are transmitted over the communication band viaa peer-to-peer signaling protocol comprising a protocol selected fromthe group comprising LMP, XML and SNMP.